


The Long Patrol

by Tyfasi



Category: Original Work, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: American Hero Industry, Anger Management, Quirk Discrimination (My Hero Academia), Redemption, Self-Indulgent, Therapy, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-08 08:03:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21232502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyfasi/pseuds/Tyfasi
Summary: Aspiring hero Abigail Ritter is kicked out of her school's hero course after she mauls a fellow classmate. She fucked up. Massively. And lost everything. Now she has to claw her way back to good standing. Though, her path to true heroism gets harder and more unconventional by the day.Or.I read several fics wherein a certain character is kicked out of the hero course and is shunned by the plot and other characters until an off-handed sentence near the end. Let's see how that pans out from the other perspective.





	1. Consequences

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in a hero school in America, tags and warnings to be added as needed.

She had gone from classmate to hated outsider over the course of an afternoon. The school’s standards were strict and even retroactively finding quirk abuse in ones record had suddenly made her earlier slip up much worse. Her classmates found out that day.

The same day her computer and phone crashed, likely thanks to Ry and his techno-quirk. She lost her shoes, watch, and bed pillow likely thanks to Briana’s invisibility inducing quirk. And finally she found her lunch had gained sentience and walked away all thanks to Tiberious’ life giving quirk. Ry and Briana had once treated Ritter as friends might, but clearly not anymore. 

Ritter was expecting it when she was called to the principal's office. She dragged her feet and tail all the way there, her wings so drooped she could rest her arms on them, and she kept her head down at the various “sucks for you!” “Ha!” and “Called it” jeers that came from her classmates.

When she walked into the office and saw the looks on the principal and her teachers’ faces she felt the hot rush of panic run through her.

‘ _ Worst case scenario I get expelled’  _ she thought ‘ _ No, worst case scenario they call the cops on me’ _ . She almost reflexively began running though plans if the worst case scenario happened.

‘ _ I’m flying off this campus and no one will ever see me again, I’m out, cheesing it, I’ll survive in the Aleutians or something they probably won’t look there’ _ she thought rapidly.

“Abigail, you know how serious this is, quirk abuse that looks like a pattern is a massive cause for concern but the involvement of another student can’t be unaddressed,” her teacher said.

“Do you have any extenuating information to, well, help your situation?” The principal asked. Why did you do it. That’s what he’s asking. She doesn’t have a reason. When she was younger and even angrier than she typically is now she would use her quirk to make her classmates panic and run so she could chase them because it was incredibly fun for her. It was satisfying and delightful to catch someone who was running away. She was a terror for years, and she had just done it to another student all over again except this time there are adults who give a shit.

All Ritter could do was shake her head.

“Abigail we can’t let behavior like this go unpunished,” the principal said and Ritter held her breath.

“You’ll be transferred to general studies, you will not use your quirk under any circumstances. You will have a chance to be considered for the hero course during the next sport festival.” Her teacher said, his dark expression had not changed since she’d walked in.

“You will also be going to anger and quirk management sessions for the foreseeable future and for the next few weeks you will be in quirk restraints until your therapist deems them unnecessary,” the principal explained. Ritter thought she would have rather been expelled. She licked her lips.

“Uh, both quirks or only uh eyes?” she asked and lifted her wings slightly to make the point.

“Both,” her teacher said.

“Please spend the rest of today moving out of your dorm and into the general studies dorm, please remember that general studies dorms are only weekday dorms and you’ll go home to your uncle’s house on the weekends,” the principal explained.

“If we hear about any incidents that occur over the weekend we may have to take legal action against your uncle for allowing it, understand?” her teacher said and Ritter nodded despite the rush of panic.

“Here’s your new schedule, make note of both anger management and quirk therapy sessions, missing a single one of either is grounds for expulsion,” the principal said as he handed her a few sheets of paper. She took the paper and stared blankly at them.

“You’re dismissed,” the principal said and Ritter, in an odd numbness turned around and left.

She walked to her dorm and packed up in a daze. Everything she had fit in her clothing hamper and her backpack. She carried it out of the dorms and to the general studies dorm building. The entire school had heard the news at this point, and she knew they were talking about her as she walked by but she couldn’t focus on what they were saying, it was all still fuzzy. 

Ritter found her new assigned room easily and sat on the bed for a short while before looking at the papers she’d been given.

It said she had to go to the quirk therapy Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the anger management was on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Today was Wednesday and she wasn’t about the try her luck thinking that this all would start next week. So she got up and left for the indicated room on the east side of campus.

On the way there she checked her phone, which was still glitching on occasion but appeared mostly back to normal. She opened a message app, considering in a vague uncertain way to say something to her classmates, she wasn’t sure what to say. Should she apologize? How on earth would that shake out? 

The decision was made for her, as she had been kicked out of the class chat and blocked by every one of the hero students. She tried not to feel too hurt by that, after all she sort of deserved it.

She was at the therapists’ office before she knew it, too lost in half-thoughts what-if and why-didn’t-I. Ritter had the wherewithal to knock on the door, at least.

The woman who opened the door was a bit odd, with wild hair and large glasses, her mismatched beaded jewelry looked handmade.

“You must be Abigail, come in! You’re a little early so let me finish getting set up,” the woman said and turned back into her office. Ritter shuffled inside and stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, she didn’t feel especially like sitting on the old couch. She watched as the therapist dug through a large box of assorted equipment.

“My name is Terry Jackson, you can call me Ms. Jackson and I’m your quirk therapist, I have the quirk dampeners here one second,” she said. Anxiety overwhelmed Ritter when she saw the dampeners, a pair of mirrored goggles and a pair of large buckled straps designed for wings. Her tail was rattling loudly, the sound shivered in the air and Ms. Jackson gave Ritter a hard look.

“We’ll work on that,” she said. Ms. Jackson handed Abigail the goggles.

“Put these on, I’ll do the wings,” the therapist said. Ritter looked at the goggles in her hands, it was tinted and mirrored like welders goggles and after she put them on and tightened the strap around her head it was darker like she was wearing sunglasses. She stayed shock still as Ms. Jackson put the straps on Ritter’s great bat-like wings and tightened them to be folded close to her back. 

On two occasions Ritter had been frightened while flying, and in fear her wings would close and lock up, rendering her grounded. It had been the explosive flight of a pheasant that had startled her once, and a backfiring car on the second occasion. In both instances it had been far more terrifying to be unable to fly away from the potential danger than the initial fright.

Abigail was reminded of that feeling when her wings were immobilized and she felt undeniably grounded. Downed. Crippled.

Ritter’s tail rattled at a vicious, buzzing pace.

“Stop that, honestly you should have better control at your age,” Ms. Jackson said as she finished the wing restraints and moved back to the box of supplies.

“It’s involuntary,” Abigail said but her voice felt thin.

“Yes, yes, come sit over here,” Ms. Jackson said and Ritter went to sit stiffly on the old couch. The therapist sat on a chair next to the couch and grabbed Ritter’s hand.

“Wha-?” Ritter said as Ms. Jackson began dabbing superglue onto each of Abigail’s talons. Ms. Jackson then pushed little rubber caps onto each talon, like putting corks on a bulls horns. After putting the rubber caps on each talon on her hands Ms. Jackson reached down and grabbed one of Abigail’s bare feet to put the caps on her foot-talons. Ritter was so bewildered it took her a long moment to realize the color of these rubber caps.

“Um...is there anything other than pink?” Abigail asked.

“Afraid not, this is the first time I’ve ever had to use them, but you can put nail polish on them later,” Ms. Jackson said. Ritter didn’t feel like telling her that she didn’t have nail polish and any classmates that did would not want to paint nails with her anymore. 

Ms. Jackson finished with the claw caps and sat upright, checking her watch.

“We still have the rest of the hour, how about we talk about that tail of yours, you said it was involuntary?” Ms. Jackson asked and Ritter nodded.

“Do you know what the triggers are?” Ms. Jackson asked and Ritter thought about it.

“I mean, obviously it happens when I’m pissed, or freaked out, when people are in my space and I don’t like it or whatever, sometimes I rattle when I just get really excited,” Ritter explained.

“See this is why you’re also in the anger management, since your quirk is partially responsive to your emotional state,” Ms. Jackson said. “But you can rattle on command, correct?” Ritter flicked her serpentine tail and rattled it loudly for a few seconds.

“Wonderful! I’m also guessing you can stop even the involuntary response easily?” she asked and Ritter nodded.

“Good, so you’re going to work on stopping the rattle response every time it happens alright? You don’t have to be able to halt it immediately but I would like you to practice alright?” Ms. Jackson said and Ritter nodded again.

“Excellent! See? This isn’t so bad at all! Now how about you tell me all about your quirk and we can get a game plan on how to control it better okay?” the therapist said.

By the time their hour was up Ritter left the office with a weird sense of hyper-awareness of her own body. She kept noticing how her wings tried to move, but couldn't because of the straps. The feeling of rubber caps on her palms instead of talons was a little unnerving, and the tinted goggles were making it a bit more difficult to see in the dull evening light.

She thought she would be angrier by now, raging against all of this. And she was extremely insulted by the schedule Ms. Jackson had given her to practice quirk control as if she was a  _ toddler _ . But mostly Ritter felt hollow and washed-out the entire walk back to her dorm.

Her bad day wasn’t over yet though. She realized this upon entering the dorm common area and saw the general education students congregated there, watching tv and doing homework. She tried to slink to her dorm room but luck had never really been on her side.

“Oh look! Finally decided to show your face huh Ritter?” A nasally voice shouted and immediately all eyes were on her.

“Shit looks like I lost that bet, I had good money on you getting expelled,” the nasally voice said again and Ritter recognized this kid as Jem, he had a hair-color changing power.

“Decided to slum it with us instead?” Another kid asked, Ritter didn’t know this girl.

“ _ Holy shit _ look at those quirk restraints!” Salem shouted from his place on the couch.

“Kinda glad the teachers aren’t taking chances on her losing her cool again,” a different girl said, Ritter thought her name might be Gabby. 

“Yeah geez I was gonna say that you’re the same as us now but  _ this  _ is different,” Jem reached to grab the straps on her wings but Ritter had enough she slipped right past him and into the hall to the dorms, her rattle clearing the rest of the way with it’s frightful noise.

There was the anger. Bright hot and turning the edges of her vision red. She accidentally slammed her door shut and she heard her new classmates laughing at the outburst. Ritter started rapidly pacing her small room, her tail continuing to rattle and she didn’t even try to stop it like the therapist asked of her. Not today, she was allowed to have this, just for today. She let the noise of the rattle fill her room like angry static. She began to work on her own game plan.

She would be a hero. Nothing would stop her, not even this. The chance to move into the hero course felt unbearably slim, especially with how  _ final _ her former teachers’ tone and face had been. The sports festival was the chance but there was a lot of time between then and now, time that the hero course would be using to get better, stronger, smarter and if Ritter didn’t do the same she wouldn’t stand a chance. 

Her rattle had finally gone quiet once she’d come to her conclusions.

She needed to practice.

She needed someone to teach her.

The quirk restraints would be a problem with the first requirement, obviously, but she wouldn’t wear them on the weekends so she could practice then until she managed to convince her new therapists that she wasn’t a  _ total _ basket case. 

A mentor would be harder. She couldn’t exactly go up to the teacher who clearly thought she was a lost cause and beg for lessons, and the second she asked another teacher here is the second everyone knew what she was trying to do. She didn’t like that idea, she didn’t want anyone to know she was reduced to begging for help. 

She would have to find someone else to train her, someone outside the school, maybe in a novel discipline. Something unique to give her a reputation would do wonders to help future hero groups forget about the debacle she’s in right now.

The road ahead felt long and arduous, and she couldn’t see the end. It didn’t matter if it felt like she’d been tossed aside she would get to the end out of sheer  _ spite _ if she had to.

She paced for most of the night, but her angry energy didn’t burn off until well into the a.m. 


	2. Home Returning

Ritter hurried through her morning ablutions, and walked to class with her head down, trying to keep a low profile. Not that her gargoyle body made that possible. She nearly walked to the hero course classroom before she realized where she had to be instead.

Her new desk was, mercifully, at the back near the wall. Ritter also gladly realized that most of her day while schooling at this prestigious academy was spent under the supervision of adults. There were few instances where she could be tormented by her righteous peers bent on avenging Ray’s injuries.

The exception was lunch.

Ritter wasn’t an idiot, she knew she wouldn’t be welcome at the table where her former friends sat. But she walked by it anyway, just to be sure. They noticed her, she knew it, but no one took any opportunity to say anything and pointedly ignored her.

Just as she was heading towards a small empty table by the kitchen her tray was slapped out of her hands and hit the ground with a clatter. Ritter looked up to see the smug face of a student she didn’t know. The anger was building up and she was hyper-aware of her body again. She couldn’t open her wings to assert her space, couldn’t dig her claws into the wood of a table to control herself, wasn’t supposed to rattle her tail in warning, and the boy in front of her couldn’t even see most of her expression thanks to the goggles.

Ritter only had her voice, so she opened her mouth to tell him off right when a carton of milk was thrown at her head. The carton was pierced by one of her horns and burst, spilling milk over her entire head. 

The shock of the carton to her head caused her words to come out as a _roar _.

It was the guttural roar of a lion and it rattled the windows and stopped all activity in the cafeteria.

Ritter knew her sharp teeth were bared, and she knew with every heavy exhale came a rolling growl. She was too livid to care. Ritter stepped over her tray, shoving past her fellow student, and stormed out of the cafeteria.

She rushed up the stairs, heading for the roof, thinking all the while ‘ _It’s Thursday, the weekend is so close, just today and tomorrow. Two more days. Two more days.’_

When she got to the roof she breathed hard and angry and started to pace. She walked the perimeter of the roof like a tiger pacing its enclosure. 

Her peers reactions made sense. This was a hero school. If they decided someone was ‘bad’ or ‘villainous’ then they could easily justify taking action against that person. They were being taught to do that. It didn’t mean she liked it.

Ritter paced furiously until the lunch period was over and she headed back to class. She got to her seat just in time, but noticed that everyone was pointedly not looking at her. Ritter took notes more intently than usual and tried to wait out the day.

Classes dragged on, especially after Ritter realized she had never cleaned the milk off her head. It never started to stink but her skin and hair felt tacky and itchy.

The end of the day came slow and Ritter waited as her classmates packed up, taking her time to leave the classroom.

“Abigail, please stay after class,” Mr. Plasmus said and the remaining some students added the various “oo”s and “someone’s in _trouble _” as they left.

_‘Of_ _course_,’ Abigail thought bitterly _‘nothing today could have been easy.’_

She stood and waited near her teachers desk as the last few students left. Mr. Plasmus was the only other person in the classroom that had a physical mutation quirk. He had four arms, skin as black as coal dust, and he exhaled plasma. His was an odd quirk, though probably no less odd than her own.

“I heard about the incident that happened during lunch,” he said.

“What did you hear?” Abigail asked.

“That you had an outburst at another student, is that accurate?” Mr. Plasmus asked and Ritter felt her lip curl.

“Yeah, that’s accurate,” she said.

“Abigail, outbursts like this hurt your chances of getting back into the hero course, I’ll have to make a note of it,” he explained.

“I know,” Ritter said. She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep herself from snarling something rude instead.

“I don’t want to hear about any more incidents like this, understand?” Mr. Plasmus said.

“You won’t,” Ritter said, biting her cheek harder to keep her tone even.

“Alright, good, I won’t keep you from your therapy session, don’t be late,” Mr. Plasmus added and turned to pack up his own things.

Ritter rushed out of the classroom and speed-walked down the hall. She didn’t see many other students on her way to anger management and those she did see moved out of her way rather quickly. She must have had a rather dark expression. Ritter figured her expression must be worse than she thought because when she walked into the therapists’ office he looked a little startled.

“Goodness, you’re just a ball of fury, aren't you?” he said and that threw Ritter off a little bit.

“Wh- _what?” _she hissed. The man chuckled and sat down in his large armchair.

“Sorry, my quirk allows me to sense people’s emotions, I didn’t mean to say that out loud,” he said and gestured to the armchair opposite of him. Ritter slumped into the chair and crossed her arms.

“I’m doctor Stone, but you can call me Dennis if you like,” Dr. Stone said and Ritter didn’t reply, she was still biting the inside of her cheek as she wasn’t sure what would come out of her mouth if she stopped. The therapist hummed in thought.

“Bad day I take it?” he asked.

“You could say that,” Ritter said tersely. 

“I’m sorry about that, here, lets wind down from the day a little. Do you like chess?” he asked and Ritter was caught off guard.

“Uh, yeah, my uncle taught me. I’m not good at it though,” she said.

“That’s alright, it’s just a nice game to play,” Dennis said and turned to pull the board and pieces off a small bookshelf next to his chair. He set the board on the coffee table between them and began setting the pieces. 

“Do you play black or white?” Dennis asked.

“Um, black I guess,” Ritter said.

“Ah, bold to let your opponent go first!” Dennis said and moved a pawn.

“Naw black is just more punk,” Ritter said as she moved a pawn as well and Dennis laughed.

The game progressed in relative silence. Ritter focused intently on the game so much so that she didn’t notice the lazy rattles her tail would shiver out when she thought too hard on her next move.

“Don’t take this the wrong way but do you have a prey drive?” Dennis asked suddenly as he finished a move and Ritter’s head snapped up in surprise.

“I just mean that function follows form, some people with dramatic physical quirks find that their mind has adapted to the change as well. This is true often for people with animal-like mutations,” Dennis said.

“Huh,” Ritter processed this, looking back on her behavior. “I guess I must have a prey drive, you know you’re the first one to ask me that, not even Ms. Jackson asked that.”

“Ms. Jackson is a little inexperienced, at least compared to me, I’m a very old hat at this,” Dennis said and moved his rook.

“Does the...prey drive change things?” Ritter asked.

“Only a couple methods that should work better than conventional things,” Dennis explained.

“That sounds...good,” Ritter mumbled as she got distracted by Dennis moving a knight. The game went on for a while longer. Abigail was a much less experienced player and for every piece she took Dennis took two of hers. In the end - 

“Check mate,” Dennis said and Ritter huffed.

“Best two out of three?” She asked with a grin and Dennis chuckled.

“Maybe next time, but we do have to do some anger management today,” Dennis said and Ritter sighed.

“Fine, what are we doing?” Ritter asked.

“Not much, really. I want you to think about what kinds of things make you angry and recognize the underlying reasons,” Dennis said.

“What, right now?” Ritter asked.

“Well, sure, but I want you to think about this for the next few days, once you can recognize things that make you angry we can work on how to deal with those situations, alright?” Dennis said and Ritter nodded.

“Is that it for today?” Ritter asked.

“Yes, I think a short first session is a good idea, I’m sure you have a lot on your mind already, but do think about what I said over the weekend,” Dennis said.

“Yeah okay,” Ritter said and picked up her bag.

She slung it over her shoulder and shuffled toward the door. She turned to look at the therapist, still a little bewildered about the entire turn of events.

“Uh, thanks for the game,” she said and left quickly.

During the walk back to the dorms Ritter ran through her encounter with this odd man. This wasn’t what she expected from an anger management session. She expected to be told to get a hold of herself and get over it. Well, nicer than that but that was the general picture she had of this kind of therapy. She found herself hoping that all the sessions would be like that, winding down after the day and talking. At least she hoped it would continue not being like the quirk therapy sessions. 

It was the late afternoon at this point and Ritter was beginning to realize that she hadn’t eaten all day. The cafeteria would be closed by now, students were expected to make their own dinners in the dorms. But that would require Ritter to be in the same common area as her classmates. Well, maybe she could slip in, make a sandwich and slip out without much trouble. She could sneak right by everyone, like a shadow, and Ritter quite liked this idea. She liked it so much she slunk through the campus landscaping on her way back to the dorm, weaving in between bushes and crouching to be in the darker shadows. She felt like a fearsome jungle cat and the idea gave her some courage as she neared the dorm building.

She was immediately noticed upon walking into the common room. Several of her classmates were at the couch and tables either eating or doing homework.

“Oh yeah, I keep forgetting you’re here now,” Jem said from his place at the table with the rest of his study group. Ritter rumbled and moved to the kitchen.

She dug through the large fridge and pulled out fixings for a sandwich. Ritter threw a meal together quickly, a simple turkey sandwich, and decided against taking one of the sodas in the fridge. Last thing she needed was to piss off a classmate by drinking someone’s soda. 

Ritter devoured her sandwich over the sink and grabbed some water before heading to her room. She wasn’t bothered on her way there, and it seemed to Ritter that her classmates had decided ignoring her was easier. That suited her just fine.

It was still relatively early in the evening, so Ritter spent some time putting some of her stuff away from her fast move-in. She spent the rest of the evening doing homework and watching the wind playing with the treetops out her side window. The aching need to fly was getting progressively worse. Maybe she would talk to Ms. Jackson about it tomorrow. She might even bring up that ‘prey drive’ thing Dennis was talking about.

She tried to go to bed early that night but became desperately restless and wound up pacing her room until the small hours of the morning. Her mind kept rolling with constant thoughts of ‘I have to’ and ‘I better do that’ and endless anxious plans of things she needed to do but also couldn’t stop thinking about long enough to _go to sleep _. 

After several hours and a set of aching feet she did finally manage to fall to her bed to get a few hours of shut-eye.

Her Friday started promising.

She managed to get breakfast, snarfled it on the way to class and was blessedly ignored the entire morning.

Class was boring, though, and her attention kept getting drawn to the increasing winds outside. Through the open window she could smell distant rain and ozone, it gave her a strange anxiety. Ritter got in her tail-rattle practice that day, stopping it from hissing its rattle all day, even if she couldn’t keep her leg from bouncing or her mouth from watering as she felt the storm getting closer. 

It felt like lunch came unusually late and Ritter hurried to the cafeteria. It was crowded and Abigail spent a long while in line waiting, but was eventually able to pile food onto her tray. She had learned to keep an eye out this time as well, and dodged an attempt to trip her with a deft side-step. 

She found one of the small tables, at the end side of the cafeteria near the sweeping windows. Ritter sat and shifted to take her weight off of her bound wings. There was little muscle in the wings themselves, they were mostly tightly-wound tendon and sinew with extremely powerful muscle bunched up at the shoulders on her back. The bat-like fingers between which her wing membrane was stretched were thin and light, which made them good to fly but also made them painful to lean against. So she turned the chair to sit on it sideways and curled her long rattle-snakes tail to wind delicately around her feet.

She ate her food slowly, engrossed in watching the storm roll in. It had started to rain and the wind had picked up so that Ritter could see the layers of wind speed as the rain shifted as it fell. Suddenly being unable to fly left her sensitive to situations where she _could _but now can’t, so she sat the entire lunch period imagining how she would go about navigating the winds she was watching. She imagined how she would use the wind to lift her so she could make the winds do all the work, how she would glide like an albatross.

Before she knew it she’d finished her lunch, the break was almost over, and the cafeteria was mostly empty. She scratched under the goggles, stared out the window, and decided she knew at least one thing that made her angry.

The rest of her classes passed in a dull mix of anxiety and frustration.

Quirk therapy felt like an unpleasant end to an unpleasant week and she dragged her feet the entire way to Ms. Jackson’s office. What made it infinitely worse was Ms. Jackson opened the door and appeared to be in bright spirits. Ritter hated it.

She sat across from the therapist while Ms. Jackson talked at her about how wing quirks worked. As if Ritter didn’t know how wing quirks worked. 

“Of course, wings are limbs like any other and need exercise to stay in good shape,” Ms. Jackson said. _No! _Ritter thought sarcastically _I would never have guessed!_

“Hey, uh, what do you know about quirks that cause prey drive?” Ritter asked suddenly.

“Well! Quirks that cause prey drive are common in villains and outlaws as they are typically rather hard to control,” Ms. Jackson said. “Why do you ask?” 

Ritter shrugged and Ms. Jackson gasped softly.

“Oh! _You _don’t have anything like prey drive, sweetie, you’re a good girl!” Ms. Jackson said and Ritter bit the inside of her cheek to keep from snarling. 

“Anyway! As I was saying, wings need exercise, and with quirk restraints you’ll need to make sure you’re getting exercise,” Ms. Jackson said. Ritter looked at her expectantly.

“So over the weekend I want you to do stretches and do a light workout with some oh perhaps some five pound weights?” Ms. Jackson said. Ritter stared at her in mild disbelief. 

“My wings can carry all hundred pounds of me across ninety miles before they even start getting tired and you want me to do stretches to keep them in shape?” Ritter asked sharply.

“Don’t take that kind of tone with me, you’ll get the restraints off in due time, but until then you need to do some _light _work-outs,” Ms. Jackson said. Ritter huffed and rested her head in her palm.

“Did you practice what we talked about on Wednesday?” Ms. Jackson asked.

“Yeah, I’m getting good at not making scary noises,” Ritter said.

“That’s wonderful! Now does your other quirk aspect, the um,” Ms. Jackson gestured vaguely at her head.

“The nightmare eyes?”

“Yes that! Is it involuntary as well or-?”

“No, it needs intent, effort, to work,” Ritter explained.

“That’s good, I’m sure Dr. Stone will work on that with you. How are the claw caps working? Do you think you’ll need a pair for your horns as well?” Ms. Jackson asked.

“Uh, the caps are working fine, I don’t need any for my horns they’re not really for like...stabbing or anything,” Ritter said. Her horns faced backward, more like a goats horns than a bull’s.

“Wonderful!” Ms. Jackson said and again began talking about how to exercise her wings. Ritter let her talk, zoning out a bit as she mostly just watched Ms. Jackson’s slightly wild gestures, which included ‘flapping’ her arms.

“If I can ask, what’s your quirk?” Ritter asked suddenly, interrupting whatever the therapist had been going on about.

“Oh! Well, it’s not quite as useful as yours but I have bioluminescent patches under my eyes. You can only really see it in the dark,” Ms. Jackson said and if Ritter squinted she could see the off-color skin under her eyes.

“Huh, neat,” Ritter said.

“Thank you! Oh, it looks like we’re out of time, remember to do some work-outs over the weekend okay?” Ms. Jackson said and Ritter nodded as she picked up her bag.

She didn’t wait for Ms. Jackson to say goodbye, Abigail just shuffled out the door. She had a long trek home tonight now that she couldn’t fly back. The train got her nearly back home but she would have to walk a ways as well. _If _she deigned to actually follow the schools rules once she was off campus.

The dorms were mostly empty by the time she got back to grab some essentials. Most people went home for the weekend. She did, however, pass Jem as he was leaving. They nearly crashed into each other on the staircase.

“ _Shit _watch it will you?” he said and Ritter grunted an apology. Just as she moved around him, though, he stopped her.

“Hey did you hear? The hero teacher is training that mind reader kid from the other gen ed class,” he said.

“And?” Ritter said, not looking back at him.

“ _And _that means they’ve already totally written you off, bad luck,” Jem said with a nearly sing-song voice. Ritter took a large breath, and then turned to look him in the eye, but with the goggles she doubted it had much meaning.

“Why do you do this?” she said, her words were low and rumbled with the edge of a growl.

“Because you don’t deserve to go back to the hero course, _everyone _in the gen ed courses are more deserving than _you, _” he said and Ritter let her tail hiss a long slow rattle. Jem broke eye contact to look at her tail nervously.

“I guess we’ll see about that,” Ritter said and continued her way down the stairs.

For the first time she was slightly grateful for the goggles, otherwise Jem may have seen how badly his news had shaken her.

She slowly made her way off campus and towards the train station, her head down. The school was in a nice neighborhood, little victorian houses with nice organic grocery stores nearby, the trees that lined the streets had little fences around them. Ritter was always uncomfortable walking through this area to get to the train station at the bottom of the hill. She felt like a bobcat walking through the expensive suburb, out of place, from somewhere different and unsuited to this habitat. It made her nervous, like someone would come and throw rocks at her for being to loud or something.

The train station was nice as well, utterly without graffiti and homeless people. She saw three classmates sitting together, waiting for a train, but none of them acknowledged her as she walked by. They just sat and continued their conversation about whether or not Mr. Plasmus needed to use sunscreen. Ritter walked past them quickly and sat on a bench at the end of the station.

Her classmates’ train came first and Ritter was left alone. The sun set early this time of year and the street lamps had come on already. Abigail sat under the greasy yellow light and tried to calm herself down. The teacher she needed to convince that she was worth a second chance had already picked a favorite. That was fine. She wasn’t expecting help from any of the teachers at her school anyway. Her plan remained unchanged.

The train was five minutes late and there didn’t seem to be many people on it. Ritter wondered if this was normal, she always flew to where she was going so she wasn’t too sure of the minutiae of train travel.

She took a seat by a large window and settled in for a long ride home.


End file.
